


King of Cups

by cosmic_medusa



Series: We Three Kings [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Addiction, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Drug Addiction, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-17
Updated: 2019-03-17
Packaged: 2019-11-21 11:35:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18141659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmic_medusa/pseuds/cosmic_medusa
Summary: The King of Cups is a strangely ambivalent figure. He represents someone who is calm on the surface, yet passionate and volatile underneath. Usually a man of art or religion, the King of Cups appears as a wise advisor and a noble healer. He is a natural diplomat, a romantic to the core and a stimulating partner. The appearance of the King is often a sign that you should employ peace and tolerance to solve your problems. Do not blame others for their failures, but help them to see how they can succeed again.





	King of Cups

**Author's Note:**

> The King of Cups is a strangely ambivalent figure. He represents someone who is calm on the surface, yet passionate and volatile underneath. He shows a situation that is not entirely what is appears to be at first glance.
> 
> Usually a man of art or religion, the King of Cups appears as a wise advisor and a noble healer. He listens to the suggestions of others, even when they are in conflict with his own carefully formed opinions. He never judges, never blames others for their faults, and is always a sympathetic supporter. In return, others always gather around to hear what he has to say because his wisdom speaks directly to the heart. He is a natural diplomat, a romantic to the core and a stimulating partner, whether in conversation, friendship or a sexual relationship. He rarely lacks confidence, and in those rare cases when he does, nobody realizes it.
> 
> In fact, the King of Cups is almost always hiding something. He enjoys the quiet power he holds over others, and his personal agenda is as well-crafted as his speeches. All of this comes about as a direct result of the battle between his fiery soul and his watery heart. The two opposing influences pull him in totally different directions, and often he does not know which to follow. As you might expect of such a combination, he is insecure and indecisive, often letting others act for him.
> 
> The appearance of the King is often a sign that you should employ peace and tolerance to solve your problems. Use diplomacy rather than force, and accept different points of view. Do not blame others for their failures, but help them to see how they can succeed again.
> 
> Copyright 2000 James Rioux, ATA Tarot.com

The night of Rachel’s wedding, Cas did something he’d never done: he took the elevator to the top of the Empire State Building.

People who lived outside the city couldn’t believe he’d never done it, the way they’d gawk at a Parisian for not taking in the Eiffel Tower, or a Philadelphian for never viewing the Liberty Bell.

Cas had had a couple glasses of wine and he was over his limit. He paid off a guard to run him up at the very end of visiting hours, where all that lingered was a couple hooking up hot and heavy by the darkened gift shop and a group of Chinese students, flashbulbs flying out over the midnight streets.

Cas stared down at the brilliant, blinding lights of his hometown. The city that never slept. The city that represented salvation to millions during the golden era of immigration. The city packed to the gills with struggling, striving souls burning to be more than a face in the crowd, yearning for the privileges he’d been given: wealth, connections, an Ivy education. Respect. Recognition. Even an amazing friend, a beautiful, smart, loving woman he’d stood by and watched wed to a man clearly crazy about her.

Victor Hendrickson was perfect: smart, handsome, a Federal Agent before he was thirty. Rachel admitted that, as soon as the case they’d been collaborating on had ended, they’d become lovers on the desk of her office. He’d given her passion—the only thing Cas could never provide. And when she stared up into his eyes and said “I do,” Cas couldn’t help but feel his own eyes brim, because she’d never looked at him like that, and, no matter how hard he wished he could, he knew he’d never given that to her.

As her Best Man, he’d given a speech from the heart. Her wedding was the perfect mix of WASPy tradition to appease the socialites—Rachel on her father’s arm, the spacious Church, the reception at the Rainbow Room—with just enough edge—the black groom, the Best Man among her bridesmaids—to irritate her mother.

Cas couldn’t help but love Victor, for all he was giving the woman he thought would be his own wife. And he’d love Rachel forever, he knew that. Besides, his own life was far from barren—he had the family, his work at Morgan hospitals, the drama of his brothers to keep up with, the science of endlessly evolving medicines to commit to memory. He had the world—Manhattan—quite literally, at his feet.

And there, down to the millions clustered amongst lights, he said: “I’m lonely.”

The words didn’t carry very far in the dark. Besides, security called, it was time to go down.

*

Cas took shifts like alcoholics take drinks. He slept in fitful bursts, waking up near-manic, going to work when he didn’t have to, when he wasn’t _supposed_ to, just do anything to be focused, to have anything but dark silence. It got to a point that his supervisor ordered him onto a week vacation which Cas spent wandering desperately through museums, through parks, through the family mansions, trying to focus on anything but how tired, how _alone,_ he truly was.  

In the middle of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Impressionist section, Cas sat down in front of a gigantic Monet and began to cry. He wasn’t used to it and it hurt his chest and ran snot all over his upper lip, and he had nothing to wipe it with, so he ended up smearing his coat sleeves while people moved around him, pretending not to see.

New Yorkers did that. Cas himself had done that. It wasn’t that they didn’t care: it’s just that, in a city of so many, sometimes you needed to let go, and couldn’t find the privacy to do so. They were respecting his personal space, his personal pain, just as Cas had done.

“I’m _lonely_ ,” he told the water lilies. The words didn’t carry very far in the narrow gallery. Besides, the intercom announced, the museum was closing.

*

During a family dinner, Lou and Michael got into the topic of politics, Gabe got drunk, Ralph got summoned to a board meeting, their mother left in tears, Lou stabbed a chair with a steak knife, and Michael left without paying the bill. While Gabe attempted to apologize and waited for the staff to figure out what the cost of a new upholstery job should be, Cas wandered along the windows looking over the East River.

“I’m...” he managed, before the little yellow lights blurred in his eyes.

The sound didn’t do much other than fog the glass. Besides, Gabriel called, it was time to go.

*

“So,” an old lady said when he went to take her blood pressure. “Which one are you? Grumpy, Douchey, or Spoiled Morgan?”

“I’m—” Cas stopped short, stood up straight, and smiled. “I’m leaving.”

*

Kansas City Melbourne Medical Center couldn’t believe its luck.

It didn’t _just_ have a Morgan—it had a Morgan at a sub-par salary.

Cas had an apartment overlooking the downtown. He had all the shifts he could ever ask for. He had a new car. He had the respect of the small staff, and even of his new supervisor, a beautiful redhead he vaguely considered wooing. He tried to embrace his new city, tried to immerse himself in his new job, his new patients, his new world. Tried it all.

But still, when he woke at night to the muted television and the endless quiet, he felt a desperate clawing in his chest, a raw fury of _let me out_ that he could only imagine was his blockaded soul pleading for anything other than lab results.

Cas just kept working. Kept telling himself that what he was doing was fresh and new. He was healing the sick. He was educating his colleagues. He was building a career. He was dealing.

One day, he drove his car to the mechanics’, and a man with green eyes smiled and asked him what he needed, and knew, right off the bat, that it was more than a tune-up.

His name was Dean Winchester, and the first thing he said after he and Cas had ordered their first drinks was “dude, you look miserable as hell. What’s going on?”

*

Now, when Cas can’t sleep, Dean spoons him and smoothes his hair and hums rock ballads until he does. When he feels alone he has Sam sending him texts or Dean shouting that he can’t work the cable or Anna and Peter at the hospital smiling and joking as he reviews his charts. Sam and Dean bug him to watch movies and eat peaceful meals at home and have “family time,” where it’s just the three of them.

Now, when he’s lonely, he only has to pull on a white t-shirt when he’s fresh out of the shower and smile at Dean, and he’s wrapped up in strong arms and looked at like Victor looked at Rachel, and Cas knows he’s giving that same look back.  

In retrospect, life was easy. Choices were obvious. Cas should have left New York long before he did. He should have known that Rachel wasn’t his true love, long before he wanted to marry her. Properly educated, counseled, and prescribed, it was crystal clear how frightened he’d been to break away, how brave he was to try.   
  
And how lucky, lucky, _lucky_ he was to recognize that living, happily, is a right of his own, and one he's, _finally_ , claimed.


End file.
